Friday, January 25, 2008

Back a couple of weeks ago, Chris Harris opened a pack of 1993 Bowman he had received from Steven Swinehart and son. Well, Steve was kind enough to send me a couple of packs of 1993 Bowman as well. I keep trying to send them something in return, but so far, no luck. I need to pay heed to the best quote from PCU and just accept gifts gracefully. I decided to bust one open and save the other one for later. I like squirreling away a pack along with my set and I didn't have a '93 Bowman pack yet. Some may question my refusal to rip packs when they long to be opened, but when the Robots take over I'll have a little cache of packs to open while I wait for them to harvest my body for use as a battery. Now I just needed to decide which pack has the Jeter. That's the 64 dollar question. I flipped a coin and chose this one to open. Will I pull the Jeter? Will I resist the temptation to bust both packs? Can I get through this pack rip without another unnecessary pop-culture reference? Signs point to no.

Out of this pack is one star (for 1993, at least), a few major leaguers and a bunch of hit and miss propects. Ruben Sierra kind of fizzled out, but in the early 90's he was a legit star. He was traded for Jose Canseco! Ok, bad example. Tettleton hit thirty or more homers three years running from '91 to '93. That's good stuff for 1993. I watched Wilson Alvarez's no hitter live on WGN so he'll always be cool to me. Now for the prospects. They range from the career minor leaguers (Gamez and Burton), highly rated prospects who had a cup of coffee at best (Hiatt and Barber), not so great players who still managed to have a pretty long career in the bigs (Haynes and Bergman) and one foil laden freaking future hall of famer BEAST of a hitter in Man-Ram. Manny really saves the pack from oblivion, I could have gotten Ray McDavid or Brien Taylor for my foil card. Back in '93, Phil Hiatt would have been the big pull. He was supposed to be the next Kevin Seitzer and ended up turning into Crash Davis.

I agree with Chris that 2008 Bowman should just copy its counterpart from 15 years ago. A few vets, a bunch of minor leaguers and rookies... Isn't that what Bowman's all about? Forget all that MLB rookie logo crap just for Bowman and just put out a real set. If they didn't yank Upper Deck's license for the Sweet Spot * auto they won't do anything to Topps either. Bowman Heritage is getting the axe in '08 so go retro with the set layout instead. 700 cards at 14 cards a pack with no SPs (the foil cards from this set are actually slightly easier to get than any given base card) still means people will have to bust two boxes plus to get a set so why fool with parallels and Chromes and nonsense at all? Throw in an auto or relic insert every so often and everyone will be happy.

Thanks Steven and Trent, I'll let you know when I open the second pack and pull that Jeter.

4 comments:

Great blog!Only just discovered it and it is now a daily read. I collect Hockey cards myself, mostly Stephen Weiss and have to get them via 'you know where!', as I live in the UK. Follow the Nottingham Panthers (ice hockey) and Notts County (soccer). Ambition is to watch an NHL game and a baseball game live one day. cheers

I'm more of a "What's this? You're wearing the shirt of the band you're going to see? Don't be that guy." guy myself. I've seen far too many people breaking that rule at concerts. Great movie.

They definitely need to give Bowman a complete overhaul. I bought a box of this year's stuff for $35 thinking it was a huge bargain, but I felt like I paid about $30 too much after I opened it. Maybe I'll find out in a couple of years that I got a nice pull, but since most of the real rookie cards are inserts that's doubtful.

"Don't be that guy" is definitely the classic line from the movie, but that line made me laugh the hardest. I first saw the film while I was still in college and was dealing with those kind of girls on a regular basis.